Samsung SmartCam and associated microSD card Usage

April 17, 2015

There have been a lot of questions in regards to the microSD card these days as the Samsung SmartCam series is integrated with microSD card usage as its main source of video storage. As much as storage devices have become quite mainstream, the usage and how-to's of the actual things are not as well known as one would think. There are a few problems that we've found that are causing problems these days so I'm going to go ahead and address them today. I hope all SmartCam owners will find this to be helpful in one way or another. As of right now, the three cameras that support the microSD card are the SNH-P6410, SNH-E6440, and the SNH-E6411 (also known as SNH-E6413). These three cameras have the capability of recording video footage onto the microSD card as a means of recording storage without paying for cloud service as most IP cameras will have you do. This means no paid service is required to record your videos! However, there are some things to keep in mind:

The length of your recording times will be strictly based on the microSD card size. The estimates given below are based on continuous recording

16GB - 2 - 3 Days

32GB - 5 Days

64GB - 10 Days

The recorded footage is not 1080p. It is recorded in 720p so as to ensure longer recording with the small amount of memory these cards offer. There is no setting to alter that.

There is no way to download the video footage directly from the microSD card when plugged into the camera.

You will have to remove the microSD card and plug it into your computer to pull the files.

The files are saved in AVI format so most video players will be able to play it back with no problems

With that out of the way, hopefully you have a general idea about how these microSD cards are used. If you already know these things, that's great. Now, how do you go about setting up your microSD card?

Here's how:You'll need a way to insert your microSD card into your computer. Many people have a USB card reader like the one you see here. As you can see, it's got slots for many different types of cards; this one already has my microSD card inserted into the slot designated for it. Normally these will plug right into your computers USB slot.

You'll notice a different kind of adapter to the Right. Many microSD cards come with this kind of adapter as a computer may have slots for this bigger adapter while not being able to support a microSD card being directly inserted. You place the microSD into the adapter and it functions as one big card. If you do have a slot for this on your computer, it's normally on the front and marked as such.

So there have been many issues where customers have bought microSD cards and plugged it into the SmartCam to find that it doesn't work. Here's the deal. As it would be somewhat expected that the camera pick up the card and work right away, electronics don't make our lives as easy as you would like them to. So we have to go and format the microSD card to a format that is possible for the SmartCam to read. This process is not complicated so don't worry. For most cases, you'll just be doing a simple format. Formatting is a simple process that requires you to find the disk on your computer and asking it to erase everything on the card. In order to do this you'll open up My Computer and locate the newly inserted card. You'll recognize it considering its the newest thing on that menu.

You'll right click on that particular drive and you should see an option to Format. Once you've clicked on that option, you'll see a new screen come up like the following:

As you can see, there are different formats for the drive as it is. The format that we want is FAT as NTFS is a bit more complicated than we need. It also isn't the most friendly as far as systems like an IP camera reading it. FAT, FAT32, exFAT; it doesn't matter which one you choose. Most of the time all three aren't even available. I'd recommend unchecking the Quick Format option and pressing start. Whether you have it checked or unchecked, the process should be fairly quick considering the size of memory cards aren't that big. So after you've done this, you should be good to go as far as using it with your SmartCam. I'll also include some recommended instructions for your first use as well later on. Now you are all ready to get recording! We recommend you do the following when inserting a microSD into the SmartCam for the first time:

Turn off the camera.

Insert the microSD

Then turn the camera back on.

Wait for it to reconnect.

Go to your Setup section on the SmartCam website (after logging in)

Select the SD Card Tab

Set the settings as you so please as shown below.

Format through the SmartCam platform one last time just to be safe.

Downloading the video footage Downloading the video footage is a simple task as well. Of course we'd love to have the feature of having to pull it straight from the card while it's still attached the the camera, but that's not available. So here's what we'll have to do.

Remove the microSD card from your camera.

Insert it into your adapter / reader (depending on what you have)

Insert it into your computer

Select the video footage based on date or all of it if you so please.

Upload to YouTube, to Vine, to your phone, or wherever you like.

It's really that simple; just don't forget to put your microSD card back into the camera after you're all done. Hope this was helpful. Enjoy!